Health equity and synergistic abatement strategies of carbon dioxide and air pollutant emissions reduction in China’s eastern coastal area

Autor: Shasha Xu, Silu Zhang, Yujie Pan, Xiaorui Liu, Emily Welsch, Xiaotian Ma, Chaoyi Guo, Hancheng Dai
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Environmental Research Letters, Vol 19, Iss 10, p 104023 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1748-9326
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad715b
Popis: Quantifying regional health disparities linked to air pollution is essential for enhancing air quality and attaining carbon neutrality objectives. Nonetheless, the efficacy of proactive policies in ensuring equitable health protection in China’s Eastern Coastal Area (ECA) remains uncertain. Here, we employed an integrated assessment model to assess the combined reduction of carbon dioxide (CO _2 ) and atmospheric pollutants and their health repercussions in the ECA of China. Our findings reveal that 273 000 premature deaths are attributable to air pollution in 2060 in the ECA in the absence of mitigation policies. Conversely, carbon reduction policies are poised to curtail 80% of CO _2 emissions, alongside reductions of 76% for NO _x , 79% for SO _2 , 80% for PM _2.5 , 72% for VOCs, and 66% for NH _3 emissions. Air pollution control policies could mitigate premature deaths by 19 600, while carbon reduction policies could potentially lower them by 50 800. The health inequality coefficient among provinces stands at 0.19, primarily attributable to significantly higher mortality rates in Hebei and Shandong. These findings yield valuable insights for crafting synergistic abatement strategies in similarly imbalanced developmental regions grappling with comparable environmental challenges.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals